Earlier this month (January 2018) VMware released Horizon 7.4, and with that I wanted to share some updates in regard to the network port requirements. My good colleagues over in the EUC Technical Marketing team are doing a fine job of maintaining the diagram and have recently published a white paper PDF which you’ll find here. It’s a beast of a document and highly recommended if you are deploying a VMware Horizon architecture in your environment.

An important consideration when using this network ports diagram, is that it doesn’t necessarily contain all non-VMware related ports such as Active Directory, DNS, NTP, SMB and so on. In fact one of my colleagues in the Office of the CTO mentioned this, since one of his customers ran into an issue where TCP port 135 was blocked, but this was required when joining a Pod to a federation (Cloud Pod Architecture). I thought this would be a good opportunity to describe what Cloud Pod Architecture is doing behind the scenes and provide some updates. [Read more…] about VMware Horizon 7.4 Network Ports for Cloud Pod Architecture

I frequently get asked questions on the new Horizon API module for PowerCLI 6.5 (R1), so I thought I’d share some of my notes on getting started with this incredibly useful new API for Horizon. It is hard to imagine working with any virtualization or cloud technology without adding API functionality into the mix. I use the Dropbox API to store database backups for this very blog. I heavily rely on the API provided by DigitalOcean, who hosts the Linux VPS this blog is running on. After speaking to some of my friends in VMware Professional Services, it suddenly dawned on me how a large part of their day is helping customers use APIs for our products. It has come along in leaps and bounds compared to the older SDKs and APIs available a few years back.

You don’t need to be a coder to take advantage of the Horizon API, but mastering the basics of scripting and API interaction is key to becoming a successful VMware guru!

In this video I take you through configuring NVIDIA vGPU with a GRID K2 card on a Microsoft Remote Desktop Services Host (RDSH) with VMware Horizon 6.2. In less than 10 minutes you can configure your RDSH virtual machine with a vGPU profile to deliver high performance 3D applications.

Becoming a VCDX (VMware Certified Design Expert) doesn’t mean you have reached the path to enlightenment or qualify you for an immediate pay rise. There, I said it. That is the reality. Yes it is the highest level of certification by VMware but it should NOT be your end game. The VCDX should be an incremental goal to where you want to be, you just might not realize it yet.

I’ve had a lot of time recently to catch up with the latest tweets and blogs from the virtualization community and I’ve noticed a few misconceptions about the VCDX. I have also seen some excellent comments from other VCDX’s that reflect what I am about to say.

In The Beginning

Back in the early days when the VCDX was in low double digits, there were awards, branded beer, and songs around the camp fire under the star lit sky. Well maybe not the last one but it was a big celebration and rightly so. The number of VCDX title holders are in the hundreds now and I wouldn’t think it is practical to have such a merry dance and award ceremony each time someone achieves their VCDX. Don’t get me wrong I would love this to be case, camp fire songs included, but that just isn’t going to happen.

If you’re not already running Horizon View 5.3… why not? Since Horizon View 5.3 was released VMware have already extended it’s functionality again with Feature Pack 1. If you’re not familiar with Feature Packs, they’re essentially shiny new updates and features to the core product release. These can be updates to View clients (E.g. iOS, Android, Windows) or the View server functionality itself. Anyway, the topic of this post is troubleshooting as I’ve seen some instances where the Feature Pack installation fails.

Horizon View 5.3 Feature Pack 1 provides the following features and updates:

In addition Unity Touch, HTML Access and RTAV are extended to support Windows Server 2008 and Windows 8.1, although HTML access is Tech Preview for Windows 8 or 8.1.

Troubleshooting

I’ve noticed that a few people have had issues installing the Feature Pack which may be due to the customization of the Windows 7 virtual desktop master image. Firstly, if you followed the VMware View Optimization Guide for Windows 7 then you may have disabled some Windows services that are required by the Feature Pack. Once such service is “Desktop Window Manager Session Manager (UxSms)” which is a required component for Windows 7 MMR. If this is disabled then you will get the following error: “Error 1920.Service Desktop Window Manager Session Manager (UxSms) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.”

If you don’t want to use all of the Feature Pack components listed above then you can choose not to install one or more, so if you don’t use Windows 7 MMR then simply deselect it during the Feature Pack 1 installation. Otherwise, enable the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager services (set to Automatic) and the Feature Pack will install. This service allows for Aero, 3D effects and high resolution support.

Note: This service is always on with Windows 8 and cannot be disabled.

If you have problems installing other components then check that required services are not disabled, or there are no restrictions in place preventing the VMware virtual Webcam or Audio drivers from being installed.